How To Use Social Networks In Genealogy

Whether you are an amateur or a professional genealogist, whether you have a blog or not, we all want to share our discoveries. For this, we are using more and more social networks and exchange platforms. Hence these questions: how to make the best use of social networks in genealogy? Are they all really useful?

To try to answer these questions, I have made a small assessment of the different platforms that I use, or that I have tried.

• Twitter: I use it mainly to share links to articles I enjoyed, or to announce the publication of a new article on my blog. I also consult regularly to find new articles.
• Facebook: I use it mainly to announce the publication of a new article (on my profile or on my page) but less and less to discover new articles. I find that information is often drowned with games and images more or less humorous.
• GooglePlus: I just discovered it but I use it mainly to share my articles and to follow other bloggers.
• Scoop it: I use it above all to share the articles that I liked on one of my three pages (Genealogy, motorbikes), but also to discover new articles.
• Pinterest: I noticed that this platform is well designed to organize images or links around a specific theme (I started a table with the signatures of my ancestor as my family tree maker), but I do not really consider it as a sharing tool.
• Pearltrees: I use it occasionally to organize my favorites around a specific theme, but I do not use it as a sharing tool either.
• Delicious: Another platform which I discovered recently and which seems to me to be the equivalent of Pearltrees, with a more classic interface.

In the end, seeing my use of these different platforms, I realize that these social networks serve three main purposes:

1. Share and discover links;
2. Organize favorites (possibly sharing them);
3. Interact with a community (ask questions, help other people in their research, share thoughts on our research, etc.).

The increased number of platforms emerges from the fact that these three goals cannot always be reached from the same platform. Some platforms remain generalist, allowing a lot of interaction (Facebook, Google plus). Others are more specialized in organizing information (favorites, photos), but with limited exchange and sharing functions (Pearltrees, Pinterest, Delicious). Finally, Twitter and Scoop it serve primarily to share links by highlighting recent content (chronological presentation). The interaction between members is either limited or used less in practice.

The platforms are also distinguished by the presentation of content: Twitter and Delicious favor short texts, Pinterest is relevant for images, Pearltrees stands out for its original organization of the links in pearls. Facebook, Google Plus, and Scoop it are quite versatile and allow equal use of text and image. It should also be noted that most of these platforms can send content to other networks. For example, Scoop it allows you to automatically send shared items to your Facebook and Twitter accounts. But this poses two problems:

- First, it adds the number of clicks one needs to go through before reaching the shared item. Indeed, the link shared on Twitter or Facebook will be a link to Scoop it, and it is from there that one can reach the article. This is a bit long when browsing, and quickly crippled when using a smartphone. Several people complain about this;

- The second problem is that it is no longer necessary to go on Twitter or Facebook to share content. Many people send links, from different platforms, and do not go to the site to see the links shared by others. As a result, what we share is not very visible. In the end, out of 100 subscribers (active) Twitter, how many of them really look at the links we post?

Faced with this increased number of platforms, I really wonder how better to use social networks in making a family tree. At the moment, when I like an article, I share it on Scoop it, then on Twitter, and in most cases I stop there because it already takes some time: send links to two platforms, put it on the Scoop it overview page and edit the text of the Twitter message (add hashtags, etc.). I would like to find a more efficient way to share articles that I like.